Algeria cancels deep-water port project with China

• $3.3bn project officially ended
• Initial deal signed in 2016
• Construction never started

Algeria has officially shelved a $3 billion project to build what could have been one of Africa’s largest ports, nine years after a group of Chinese and Algerian companies signed an initial agreement, Ports Europe reported.

The Algerian authorities, China State Construction Engineering Corporation and the China Harbour Engineering Company, signed an initial agreement in 2016 to develop El-Hamdania port. 

The deep-water facility, at Cherchell, about 90km west of the capital Algiers, would have had an annual capacity of 26 million tonnes of goods.

China State Construction announced that the project would be financed by China Eximbank, according to international development research lab AidData. The Chinese company Shanghai Ports would operate the facility for 25 years after completion.

Algeria signed up to China’s global infrastructure development project – called the Belt and Road Initiative – in 2018, and the two countries announced in 2022 the signing of further cooperation agreements. The port project was a part of that initiative.

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The El-Hamdania project was suspended in 2019 in the wake of unrelated national political demonstrations, although AidData says that discussions to re-open the project continued.

Menas Associates, a market intelligence consultancy focused on the Middle East and Africa, has blamed a combination of the government’s lack of project management skills, squabbling and infighting between vested interests, corruption and political instability for the project’s suspension.